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3/8/13

Tips for Beating the Wind

You can't beat the wind. You can inherit the wind, but that's an evolutionary process that takes millions of years of natural selection. Wind, more than heat or cold, is the enemy of the bicyclist. It fetters one.

You can buy a windbreaker and wear that windbreaker but the wind will not break. It will buffet, but not like a Golden Corral. It will corral you and you will fenced, like a tamed palomino or an English peasant, but not like a fleeced necklace. You can wear fleece, one golden like the corral or one fleeced from an REI, but this fleece will not let you beat the wind because you can't beat the wind.

You can let the wind ruin your day or dominate your life or make you choose alternate means of transportation, but you oughtn't. You can tunnel under the wind and call that tunnel a wind tunnel, but that would be confusing because that's not a wind tunnel is. If you eschew the bicycle on a windy day, do so for a sailboat or a hang-glider or a zeppelin, but not a lead one. For that, the wind does not have a whole lotta love.

They say that there are things such as tailwinds, but I've never encountered one. The wind I know, the wind that greets me, is the headwind. It impedes. It carries with it news from down the road, if you can call news the briny odor of unessential road salt. It disperses bus fumes, but not before they slap you in the face, like a glove of gentleman challenging you to a duel. This leaves you fuming for seconds. Pistols at dawn. Or, air rifles. You can't shoot the wind. You can pass it, but you shouldn't in mixed company.

I laugh at the wind. I cock my head back and cackle. It's meant to be defiant. It looks weird. It is weird. You can't beat the wind. You can try to put a positive spin on it, try to convince yourself that you're doing something salutary, that you're demonstrating your strength and commitment and unwillingness to be deterred by Nature, but what you're mostly doing is bicycling marginally slower on account of prevailing forces that you cannot control. And that's ok. It's not really a big deal. You'll get there eventually. You don't have to embrace the wind or use it as a foil to prove your fortitude. You don't you have to like it. You don't even have to respect it. The wind has no feelings and no interior life, unless you leave a window open.